Actually What About Six?

Every head in the packed tavern swiveled towards the back of the room, the source of the disruption. There, standing over the splinters of the chair, was a large, brutish man with a mess of a red beard and a mean, drunken glint in his eyes. He was screaming, his voice a slurred, incoherent roar, at a young woman who seemed to be doing everything in her power to shrink into herself.

From Elysia’s perspective, the girl looked like the very picture of innocence. Her long, blonde hair fell in soft waves around her shoulders, kept out of her face by a simple, thin headband. Her bright green eyes were wide, and even from across the room, they seemed to hold a natural, smiling warmth. She was dressed neatly in dark clothes, but with lighter accents and small details, gold bracelets, a soft ribbon woven into her hair. She clutched a pair of books to her chest like a shield, her knuckles white. She was clearly a half-Goliath, possessing their characteristically defined features, but she lacked their height, making her look not strange, but uniquely delicate.

“…useless fairy tales and pretty words!” the man yelled, spit flying from his lips. “This is a real city, for real people! We don’t have time for your sniveling stories about ‘demons’ in the mountains!”

The girl shook her head, her voice soft and pleading. “Please, sir, I don’t want any trouble. If you’d just listen for a moment…”

“I’ve listened enough!” he yelled. With a sudden, angry movement, he lunged forward and snatched one of the books from her arms. It was a beautiful, leather bound tome with intricate silver stars on the cover.

A flicker of genuine panic crossed her face. “No, please, that was a gift—”

RRRRIP.

The sound of the thick spine tearing, of hundreds of pages being ripped apart, was a second act of violence that was somehow more shocking than the first. The man held the two halves of the ruined book in his hands, a triumphant sneer on his face as a bunch of loose pages fluttered to the floor. And at that moment, something inside the girl broke. It was like watching the sun go out. The warmth in her bright green eyes extinguished, snuffed out in an instant, leaving behind a flat, cold, and empty darkness. Her posture, which had been demure and defensive, straightened. She rose to her full height, and though she was still a lot shorter than her tormentor, she suddenly seemed to loom over him. The soft, gentle lines of her face hardened into a mask of anger. A switch had been flipped.

“You,” she said, her voice dropping an octave, losing all its sweetness. “You should not have done that.”

Before the man could even process the change, she moved. She took one step forward and drove her fist into his chest. It sounded like a battering ram hitting an oak door. The man’s eyes went wide with shock, a grunt of air exploding from his lungs. He lifted off his feet, flew backward across the ten feet of space separating him from the wall, and slammed into it with a sickening crack. He slid down to the floor in a heap.

The tavern was silent again…

The girl cracked her knuckles. She looked down at the ruined book at her feet, then back at the unconscious form of her attacker. “Think ya could just pull up and rip my book, eh?” she snarled, the words dripping with a thuggish accent that was alien to the girl from moments before. “Now I’mma have to crush your bones into dust.”

Two of the man’s equally large friends, who had been laughing moments before, now stared in horror. They scrambled to their feet, helping their groaning companion up. Their shock was quickly turning to rage. They were going to jump her.

“Hey, hey!” Baro’s voice piped up as he, Keito, and Corin stepped forward, placing themselves between the men and the girl.

“Three on one? That’s not a fair fight.”

The men sneered, readying their fists. But they never got the chance.

The girl let out a short laugh. “Don’t worry, boys. I don’t need your help.” With a fluid motion, she grabbed the edge of the heavy, solid oak table beside her. With a grunt of effort that seemed far too small for the feat, she lifted it over her head. The men’s faces went pale. Before they could even turn to run, she brought the table crashing down on top of them, not with enough force to kill, but strong enough that pinned all three of them to the floor, their legs trapped beneath the heavy wood.

“There,” she said, dusting off her hands. “Problem solved.” She let out another laugh as the sound of the city guard’s alarm bells began to ring in the distance. She turned to Elysia’s stunned group. “Guards are coming. Unless you want to spend the night in a cell explaining this, I suggest we leave.” Without waiting for a reply, she strode towards a back exit. After a shared look of bewilderment, they followed.

She led them on a chase through the winding back alleys of Aestilgard, navigating the moon and flora lit paths with a confidence that suggested she had done this before. They finally came to a stop in a small, quiet courtyard, the sounds of the guards’ whistles now a faint, distant echo. The four of them, Elysia, Keito, Baro, and Corin, were all breathing heavily, their minds racing to catch up with the sheer chaos of the last five minutes. Umbra, the baby dragon, was perched on Elysia’s shoulder, hissing in a confused rumble.

The girl, however, was perfectly calm. She was brushing some dust off her clothes, her expression still angry and her eyes still cold. Then, she blinked. She blinked again, and it was as if a light had been switched back on. The icy fury in her eyes vanished, replaced in a heartbeat by the warm, smiling green they had first seen. The tension in her shoulders melted away, and she was once again the sweet, approachable girl from the tavern. The transformation was so sudden, it was unsettling.

“Oh, goodness!” she said, her voice back to its gentle tone. She looked at her hands, then at the alley they’d just run down, a blush rising on her cheeks. “Did… did I do it again? I’m so sorry, I really try to keep her in check, but when people touch my books…”

Baro stared at her, his mouth agape. “You… ‘did it again’? You just took out four guys, one of them with a table!” he said, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief. “That was amazing!”

“It was… reckless,” Keito corrected, though his eyes held respect. “You could have killed them.”

“She doesn’t kill,” the girl said softly, as if speaking of another person. “She just… neutralizes the threat. Permanently, if she has to.” She gave a small, apologetic curtsy. “My name is Heidi Crag. It’s a pleasure to meet you all properly.” She gestured to her own body with a self deprecating smile. “I’m half human, half Goliath. My mother was the human. I, uh, seem to have inherited her side of the height chart. In fact, I think I might be shorter than she was.”

The whiplash was giving Elysia a headache. One moment, a cold-blooded brawler, the next, a sweet, self-conscious young woman.

Heidi’s cheerful expression then crumbled, her green eyes filling with a genuine, desperate sadness. “Please,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I need your help.”

She proceeded to tell them her story, the words tumbling out in a rush of pain and frustration. Her village, a Goliath settlement high in the Hecaton Mountains, had been taken over. A demon she called it, had emerged from an old ruin a month ago. It didn't kill them. It was worse. It had enthralled them, their minds clouded by its dark influence, turning them into puppets. She had only escaped because she’d been away, trading for books. When she returned, she found her home transformed into a silent, waking nightmare. She had fled to Aestilgard, the largest city on the continent, to beg for help from the city elders, from the adventurers’ guild, from anyone who would listen.

“No one believed me,” she finished, her voice cracking. “They said I was a hysterical girl, that I was making up stories. They called me a liar.”

Elysia looked at the faces of her friends. She saw Baro’s sympathy, Keito’s cautiousness, and Corin’s annoyance at being dragged into yet another problem. But in Heidi, Elysia saw a kindred spirit. She saw a girl with a strong power, an outsider telling a truth no one was willing to hear.

“We believe you… and we can help…” Elysia said, the words firm and clear. The others looked at her, but no one argued. Her word had become the group’s compass. Heidi’s face crumpled with relief, tears welling in her eyes. “Thank you,” she breathed. “Oh, thank you! I can take you there. We can leave in the morning.”

They made their way back to the inn, the mood now thick with a new purpose. Elysia got Heidi a room at the inn. Corin, with a grumble about needing his own space to “think,” took a separate room down the hall.

That left Elysia, Keito, and Baro crowded into their small room, the warm glow of a single lantern casting long shadows on the walls. Umbra was asleep on Elysia’s pillow, a tiny little rolled up ball.

“A demon,” Keito said, pacing the small space.

“Appearing in a remote mountain village, just weeks after three corrupted dragons attack a major city on another continent. This cannot be a coincidence.”

“You think it’s part of that… convergence thing?” Baro asked, sharpening his axe with a stone, the rhythmic shing-shing-shing a comforting sound in the quiet room.

“I think it’s a certainty,” Keito replied. “The book said the veil to the demon world would thin. It didn't say it would happen all at once. Perhaps these are the first signs. Cracks in the wall, letting the darkness seep through.”

“We have to help her,” Elysia said finally. “If this demon is connected to this, then her fight is our fight.”

There was no disagreement. They were no longer just adventurers or travelers. They were the unwilling, unlikely first line of defense against a storm that no one else in the world even knew was coming. With the weight of that knowledge settling upon them, they finally drifted into an uneasy sleep. The next morning, they met a refreshed and once-again cheerful Heidi in the common room. She had a new book tucked under her arm and a large, pack on her back. She looked like any other young scholar heading out for a day of research, not a guide leading a team of S-rank adventurers to fight a demon.

With a final, grateful farewell to the innkeeper, the five of them, plus one baby dragon, stepped out into the morning light of Aestilgard and set off for the peaks of the Hecaton Mountains.